Shore Lore: A World War II shutdown

Friday

Jun 9, 2017 at 3:01 AM

By Don Wilding

A World War II shutdown

Capture of Brest led to French Cable Station closing in 1940

The French Telegraph Cable Company, or Cie Francaise des Cables Telegraphiques, often found itself relaying some of the important news of the day during the late 1800s and early part of the 20th century.

The first details of the Portland disaster and the Lindbergh flight both came through the Orleans location.

In June 1940, a major news event from Europe would indirectly lead to the temporary shutdown of the French Cable Station, which otherwise operated from Eastham and later Orleans from 1879 until 1959.

The Germans had just captured Brest, the other end of the line (known as “LeDirect”) in France, and the station was closed for security reasons.

According to the Sept. 12, 1946 edition of The Cape Codder, “the last words received at the Cape Cod end were ‘Here they come!’”

The station eventually reopened in 1952, and is now the home of the French Cable Museum, which just opened for its summer season.

However, many people may not realize that the station’s original home was next to the Nauset Lighthouses, otherwise known as the “Three Sisters,” from 1879 to 1891. The first trans-Atlantic cable message exchange was actually executed by an English company 13 years earlier, but the French got into the act in 1879 by laying a cable from Brest to St. Pierre-Miquelon off Newfoundland (a French territory), and on to Duxbury.

However, heavy shipping traffic in Duxbury Harbor led to cuts in the cable, and the line was reconnected to the North Eastham site on Nov. 16-18, 1879.

Gill, citing records from Nauset Light, told the Codder that the steamer Faraday landed at the beach on Nov. 16, the cable was “tested in the dwelling part of the lighthouse” the following day, and the ship departed on the 18th.

Gill, who was 9 years old in 1879, recalled that “there would be light flashes coming from an opening at the end of the cable. A man would read letters out of the flashes. A lot of the communications came in code. Later on, there was a tape-message system.”

The Nauset location would prove to be temporary. The Codder reported that it “proved inconvenient because of its remoteness.” The old Nauset building was converted to a hotel, but burned down in 1901.

The move to the Greek Revival structure in Orleans, formerly the home of the Universalist Church of Orleans, was made in order to be nearer land lines, the railroad, and sources of supplies. According to the French Cable Museum, “North Eastham was an isolated area and difficult to reach in bad weather.”

The current building in Orleans, now on the National Register of Historic Places, welcomed the equipment and crew to the new building in 1891.

The cable was rerouted “across the fields, by Ralph Chase’s, then well to this side of Nauset Coast Guard Station and to the water,” Gill told the Codder. “It went through Town Cove up to the Orleans Station.”

Seven years later, the Newfoundland link was cut out of the picture.

“Some years ago there was a severe earthquake at sea,” Edgar H. Upham of Orleans, a former superintendent of the station and later the French Telegraph Cable Company’s agent, told the Codder in 1946. “This did considerable damage and after this the line to St. Pierre was abandoned.”

After the station was closed in 1959, a group of Orleans citizens purchased the building and opened it as the French Cable Museum in 1972. Even though the cable was long out of commission, it still made news in 1984 when the freighter Eldia ran aground at Nauset Beach in Orleans after the vessel’s anchors snagged the cable.

Much like the Marconi Wireless station to the north, the Outer Beach became the cable station’s home because of its proximity to Europe, and was a critical link for over half a century.

“Cape Cod was chosen because it’s the point that leads out over the shortest route to France,” Upham said. “At the height of its prosperity, the Orleans station had a staff of 26 men. As improved apparatus came in, the staff was gradually cut down.”

Don Wilding, a writer and public speaker on Cape Cod lore, can be reached via email at donwilding@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter at @WildingsCapeCod. Shore Lore appears every other week.